Lena Nyman

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Alternative Title:
Anna Lena Elisabet Nyman

Lena Nyman, (Anna Lena Elisabet Nyman), Swedish actress (born May 23, 1944, Stockholm, Swed.—died Feb. 4, 2011, Stockholm), starred in the sexually explicit filmI Am Curious (Yellow) (1967), which became a huge international box-office hit in spite of—or, according to some observers, because of—its seizure by U.S. customs officials and subsequent banning as obscene. The film was finally released in the U.S. in 1969 after a federal appeals court overturned the ban and ruled that the movie was protected under the First Amendment’s clause on freedom of speech. Nyman won the Swedish Film Institute’s Guldbagge Award for best actress for I Am Curious (Yellow) and its follow-up, I Am Curious (Blue) (1968). Her other movies included Ingmar Bergman’s intense Höstsonaten (1978; Autumn Sonata) and the romantic comedy Att göra en pudel (2006; White Trash), for which she earned a Guldbagge nomination for best supporting actress. Nyman, who trained at the Royal Dramatic School in Stockholm, was an accomplished stage actress in works by such playwrights as Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg.